


Broken Things

by juniperpines



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 05:18:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1456906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperpines/pseuds/juniperpines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Nemesis impressions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Things

Balancing the personal and the private with the public was a careful game.  Deanna had learned to play it as a young girl in a household where her father orbited her mother like a moon around a dominant planet, at just such a distance to maintain his own sense of self, knowing he could do no more than influence Lwaxana’s tides.

The rules changed when he died, his earthly influence gone.  <<Like a base metal to Lwaxana’s gold,>> she heard a local dignitary think at the funeral as he swept past the casket.  It would be years before she understood that she was meant to hear it, only the first time that the intrusion of someone else’s thoughts was meant as an assault.

Everywhere she’s gone, things have shifted and shifted again.  The good-natured regimentation of Starfleet Academy, the cultured liberty of her post-graduate studies on Betazed, the rotating postings that barely left her time to unpack. The camaraderie of the Enterprise, that grew and grew from its staid start until it came to a shattering close.

…

“We will have our honeymoon,” Will said, more as a statement of blind faith than an actionable plan.

They stood in a walkway under the California sun, in the way of the cool marine air that battered and refreshed Starfleet Headquarters in equal turn.  They were in uniform, in the sight of any of a parade of admirals, but he held one of her hands in each of his and gave her his full measure of attention.

His care for her made her smile, the way few things did right now, though it couldn’t last this way.  The captain of a ship could not seem to be more concerned with his wife than his duty and his mission, not heading into the Neutral Zone.  Nor could she be more concerned with herself.  “I suppose it was tempting fate,” she said, “to plan two weddings.”  Their ceremony on Betazed was almost tacitly canceled.  She lifted his hand to her mouth, kissed the back of it before releasing it.

They turned toward the operations headquarters where he had a meeting soon, but not too soon to steal from them this walk together, planet-side.  “You can’t think like that.  It will happen.”

“Not like it was supposed to,” she said.  “I guess the captain doesn’t have to worry about what he’ll look like naked.”

There was nothing he could say to fix it, not even room to disagree, hardly time to process the scope of events that had telescoped between the two planned celebrations and made easy jokes about Betazoid customs seem cheap.  He could only distract her with his humor, and his love.  “Hey.  I’m your captain now.  I’m going to need you to remember that, Counselor.”

“Yes, sir.”  She marked it with a small, diffident salute.

…

“Darling, I don’t understand… the wedding is off?  And it’s taken you this long to tell your mother?  Where are you?”

“In San Francisco.”  Deanna looked out over the choppy waters of the bay from their temporary quarters.  Then she held up her hand to the viewscreen to show off what her mother probably thought of as her own greatest accomplishment.  “You can relax, mother, we are married, nothing has changed.  We simply can’t make it back to Betazed for now.”

Lwaxana leaned in closer to the view screen, as if that would get her a better assessment of her daughter through the subspace channel.  “You are looking completely worn out, Little One.  I don’t like the look of you at all.  William should be taking much better care of you, I’m going to have to have a talk with him.”

“You have nothing to complain about, he’s been wonderful.”  She was about to burst into tears.  Deanna had been putting off this call, dreading it for exactly this reason.

Lwaxana’s perceptiveness was inescapable.  “How long are you in spacedock?”

“Two weeks, while the crew assembles and regroups.  Then we are headed for the Neutral Zone.”

“Then you have just enough time to come see me before you ship out.”

“Mother--”

“No arguments, dearest.”  Most telepaths didn’t work across light years, but Lwaxana Troi was rarely bound by convention.  Like any daughter, Deanna saw her own burdens in her mother’s face.  “You simply must come home.”

…

Deanna felt as though the cool winds of the bay had borne her over to the warmth of the Betazoid highlands.  Two women met her outside the facility where Lwaxana had sent her, each taking one of her hands in their own.  Deanna let her eyes fall shut and allowed their assessing mental touch, and cleared her mind of conscious thought.

<<You should have come to us the first time,>> one of the women sent, a few long minutes later.

<<I was fine.  It wasn’t like this.>>

<<We’re glad you’re here now,>> sent the other.

…

<<A strange case, Ambassador.  She is handling it as well as can be expected, for such a limited telepath.  It took some time to untangle the particulars.>>

Lwaxana took the report matter-of-factly, looking over the gardens with the proprietary air of a disinterested patron.  <<Strange in what way?>>

<<It was her husband, whose place was taken when she was violated by the Reman.  With the complication that they had been through a similar mental assault together years in the past, when they weren’t lovers.  A terrible thing to happen once, let alone twice, and to newlyweds.>>

<<They aren’t married yet,>> Lwaxana opined.

<<We did consider whether we should send her back to him immediately.  There must be healing between them that we cannot help with here.  But Deanna does not feel a threat to their relationship, and there was the additional complication.>>

<<Complication?>>

<<The Reman… was Reman by association, but actually a human clone of someone Deanna trusted very much.  Someone who asked her to do something unexpected, in the aftermath of the incident.  Something that it took Deanna some time to process as another violation.>>

Lwaxana closed her eyes and read the other woman without a moment’s hesitation for her daughter’s privacy.  <<Jean-Luc Picard.  Why *would* he ask something so foolish and cruel as for her to endure more of those assaults?>>

<<Deanna believes he thought it was for the greater good -- and believes in him so deeply that she suppressed her own anger and sense of betrayal, and confusion over the assault by his clone.  And with the loss of a friend, it has been a time of great stress for her.>>

<<Starfleet,>> Lwaxana huffed.  <<So many high flown values, but what have they ever done besides take my husband from me and wreak violence upon my daughter?  I know she will never be convinced to leave,>> she preempted the counselor.  <<But a mother’s feelings on the subject cannot be denied.>>

<<No, ma’am.>>  The woman took her arm.  <<You were right to send her to us, as a sister of Betazed.  She will begin to heal.>>

…

“Hey, beautiful.”  The first words Deanna had heard spoken aloud in over a week were carried by a welcome voice.

“Will?  What are you doing here?”  She sat up on the patio chair, pushing her sunglasses back for a clearer look at her husband, as he climbed the dramatic steps outside the guest suite at her mother’s house.

“We had a week’s delay with the engine retrofit, and I thought I should come check out a personnel situation and make sure I still had a counselor.”  He came and sat next to her, taking her into his arms and a ferocious hug that she could tell was edged with restraint.  “God, I missed you.”

“I’m sorry.”  She lifted her head and kissed him sweetly before burying herself back in his embrace.  “My mother was supposed to tell you not to expect to hear from me for a while.”

“She did, but I still worried.  I’m picking up this husband thing pretty well, I think.”  He eased them both back in the chair where she had been sunning.  “Talk to me, Imzadi, tell me how you’re doing.”

“Much better,” Deanna admitted, rubbing her cheek gently against his chest like an affectionate cat.  “I’m glad I came.  I’m not sure I would have admitted that I needed this, or that I could have gotten it from Starfleet counselors.”  Will was quiet, giving her the space to elaborate.  “Basically, it was a lot to deal with  all at once, intersecting with a time of change and transition in my own life.  Which you’d think I would have been able to come up with, given my years of training…”

Riker knew the therapy had been more involved than that.  “Give yourself a break.  It’s not easy being the patient.”

“That much I know.  In any case, I’ll be in better form to serve a new crew.”  She turned her head and kissed his chest.  “They say, whenever we’re ready…”

“Shh, there’s no rush.”    There were all sorts of time tables -- transport schedules back to Earth, the Titan’s expected arrival near Romulus, the ticking of the clock inside the Troi estate that he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years, the shelf life of his own career.  What was between them ran on nothing but its own time.  He had learned to trust that.  He brushed the hair away from her forehead, pulling the sunglasses away, refolding them, and setting them aside.  Deanna began to sit up.  “We have all the time in the world... Or maybe three days.”

“Three days?”

Will shrugged and smiled.  “It’s not a honeymoon, but it’s something.”

…

An hour before sunset on the next day, Deanna left her mother’s house, well aware Lwaxana was peering from an upper story window, feigning semi-disapproval as her daughter descended the stairs and carefully shed her clothes at the bottom. Alone, across the lawn and through the expansive gardens, she accompanied herself to where her husband was waiting, near a grove of trees.

<<You look beautiful.>> If there was a ghost of embarrassment from the circle of missing guests, it quickly dissipated in the midst of the ancient rite. There was no room for prudish thoughts, only considered vows and meditative connection, and finally the physical consummation of the marriage. The couple undertook this last part in particular with all of the studied respect for Betazoid cultural customs that could be expected of a daughter of the Fifth House and a dedicated explorer of the stars.

Lwaxana smiled and hummed to herself, letting the lovers drift from her thoughts, well pleased at the hint of scandal Deanna had managed to conjure out of the unconventional ceremony, and how it spoke to her spirit. And from William, a growing understanding that his sense of duty was no longer singularly directed and her daughter did occupy a proper place in his firmament.

Some things broke and shattered like glass, some families did not forever endure, but some things were destined for another act.


End file.
